


chasing sunsets

by NeoVenus22



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-11
Updated: 2010-03-11
Packaged: 2017-10-07 21:49:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/69596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeoVenus22/pseuds/NeoVenus22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>some people were born into flying, born straight into the air.  cameron loved flying, and thought it was the best thing he'd ever done or would do, but he didn't feel it in his bones and his blood like some of the others.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	chasing sunsets

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: 'Avalon', 'Collateral Damage', 'Stronghold': the trifecta of Mitchell background spoilers.

In the dark at night, Cameron thinks of the kids he'll never raise. The son he'll never play catch with, the daughter he'll never teach how to ride a bicycle. Then he thinks about the call this family will never get, the solemn airman on their front porch, the folded flag on display on the mantle.

Cameron remembers when he was about five, his dad made them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and they sat on the back porch and watched the sun set. Cameron's dad was telling him what it as like to be a test pilot, said that if you timed it just right, the sunset could last forever, always just dipping below the horizon, until you flew ahead and watched it happen all over again. Cameron thought his dad had the coolest job in the world.

When Cameron was ten, his father crashed, and crashed hard. His dad did his best to put on a cheerful face for his only son, but Cameron caught the despair in the man's eyes when he thought no one was watching. and Cameron knew. Allen Mitchell wasn't mourning his inability to walk, he was mourning his inability to fly. It was unlikely that he'd ever get up in the air again on anything short of a commercial flight. He didn't. He learned to walk again, but he was given a medal and reassigned to a desk job. And almost every night since then, his father could be found on the back porch, staring at the sunset.

Cameron joined the Air Force without much thought. His mother didn't beg, but suggested heavily that maybe he wanted to do something else. At eighteen, Cameron loved restoring cars and then trying to pick up cute girls in them. He didn't want to be a mechanic, and he didn't think flirting was a career. He didn't see many other options, but then again, he wasn't looking.

Some people were born into flying, born straight into the air. Cameron loved flying, and thought it was the best thing he'd ever done or would do, but he didn't feel it in his bones and his blood like some of the others in his unit. Like his father did. Cameron was born with a want to fly, but not a need.

He was good, though, the best pilot in his unit. Good enough to earn himself a reputation as a throttle jockey. Good enough to get him into the 302 program, after Fergie crashed.

It was the pain of others that kept him in the sky. His father's accident convinced him to fly in the first place, and Ferguson's accident was enough to get him into the cockpit of the F302. He did a barrel roll his first solo run, not caring how his CO might react, and he was so impressed he did it again. His whoop echoed in the cockpit, and he increased altitude. If only his dad could see him now, if only his dad could be sitting up here with him. Cameron swore than when he had enough rank and enough pull at the SGC, which was bound to happen sooner or later, given his record, he'd ask General Hammond for a favor.

He didn't get the chance. After nearly a quarter of a century from his amputation, there were complications with one of Allen's legs. The doctors, a new set of tired men different from the tired men Cameron remembered from his youth, went in for exploratory surgery, and his dad died on the table.

Cameron hadn't meant to go down in Antarctica. No one ever really meant to go down, of course, but his mother didn't need to have so many tragedies tied so closely together. He promised her fervently that he would walk again, because Mitchell men didn't let the failings of their bodies limit them. He got a medal in a ceremony made blurry from painkillers, and Cameron felt the threat of desk duty looming over him just like it had for his dad.

Maybe he was born into flying after all, because the idea of spending the rest of his life bound to the earth terrified him.

The ceiling is dark in his quarters in the base. He's not officially on duty until sometime tomorrow afternoon, but he figures there's little point in going home. His job is his life, after all, and his apartment is a way station, with a lumpy bed and an empty fridge. The meals in the mess hall aren't exactly his mom's home cooking, but they're better than stale Cheetos and questionable takeout. In the deepest part of his heart, he knows that he's so reluctant to leave because he worked so hard to get here in the first place.

He's already surpassed his father. He's flown the fastest craft the Air Force has ever built. He's gone farther into space than any of the shuttles. And, unlike his father, he's given his life so fully to this job that he simply cannot imagine anything else. There won't be a small house in a quiet suburb, there won't be peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and talks with his son. Cameron has never tried his father's perpetual sunset trick, because he's afraid if he does, it will turn out all wrong.

He still has it in his head, though, that perfect glowing sunset, always just out of reach.


End file.
